Five prominent Jewish poets and writers will read from their personal collection for our annual poetry reading, established in 1999.

Howard Aaron graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is the former Program Director of the Portland Arts & Lectures Series through Literary Arts. He has published two chapbooks and currently teaches creative writing courses at Washington State University in Vancouver.

Dori Appel’s collection of poems, Another Rude Awakening, was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2008. Her poetry has also been widely published in journals and anthologies. A playwright as well as a poet, she was the winner of the Oregon Book Award in Drama in 1998, 1999, and 2001, and a finalist for the OBA in 2008. Three of her full-length plays are published by Samuel French and several monologues are included in anthologies. She lives in Ashland.

Jan Baross, daughter of immigrants from Belarus, has always been drawn to the Latin culture. Her first novel "Jose Builds a Woman" won first place for fiction for the Kay Snow Awards. She has also won awards as a filmmaker, screenwriter, playwright and librettist.

Willa Schneberg, a recipient of the Oregon Book Award in Poetry, is the originator and organizer with Director Judy Margles of O.J.M.'s annual Oregon Jewish Writers' Reading, now in its 10th season. In 2009 a prose poem appeared in Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal. Willa is also a ceramic sculptor. Her work recently was on view in ORA's, (an organization of Northwest Jewish artists) Celebration of Art.

Scot Siegel grew up in Oakland, California where his family belonged to Temple Sinai. He graduated from Oregon State University and currently lives in Lake Oswego with his wife and two daughters. Scot's books of poetry include Some Weather (Plain View Press, 2008) and a chapbook, Untitled Country (Pudding House, 2009). His poems have recently appeared in Drash, Windfall, High Desert Journal, and The Oregonian.